It is the responsibility of industry to attract people to a region, so these people can fill the jobs that industry requires; in most other places, this is celebrated.
It is the responsibility of government to ensure a well functioning society.
It appears clear to me that the government is failing its responsibility. The governments could have averted this crises by not zoning their municipalities for 3x, 4x, 5x more jobs than housing units within their borders. Its not like many of these offices have existed forever, they willingly allowed the creating of new offices, with out the requisite housing to support. (See, New Apple Spaceship HQ, Facebook campus, and expansion in Menlo Park, Google's constant expansion, the numerous new office parks that have sprung up in every city on the peninsula in the last 10 years).
Much of this is jobs/housing imbalance is a result from prop 13, which disincentivized housing construction by making the development of commercial property more net tax advantageous (taxes in minus services provided) when compared with housing.
Democratic governments exist to serve the people who vote for them. I'd say they have succeeded in increasing property values for property owners who voted for them. Every single house in SF is owned by someone, and that someone benefits from this situation persisting, so there are quite a lot of winners.
Democratic governments exist to serve the people who vote for them.
Democratic governments should serve everybody, not only the people that voted for them. Of course they'll have some obvious preferences, but neglecting or even crushing a sizeable group of people because they're not their voters is not what democracy is meant to be. It's not even wise.
>The governments could have averted this crises by not zoning their municipalities for 3x, 4x, 5x more jobs than housing units within their borders.
Each municipal government is correctly pursuing a local optimum by doing this. The life of an existing homeowner gets no worse for the presence of a tech company office in their municipality, and the tax revenue from the company can be used to fund better services and/or lower taxes for locals.
Night-time populations, on the other hand, require water and sewer and education and policing, more wear on the roads or staggeringly expensive public transit buildouts, etc.
Each city is pursuing the best interests of its home-owning electorate in signing up for the tax revenue without the responsibility.
Ignoring property values and aesthetics, the first municipality to liberalize housing construction will get to pay all the scaling costs that the whole region should have shared.
But successful companies have a strong influence on government -- keeping taxes low, else threatening the leave.
As Bernie said: govt doesn't regulate business - it's the other way around. Businesses dictate what they want. Blame shareholders, and boards of directors? But I don't expect them to change -- they're having a great run.
It is the responsibility of government to ensure a well functioning society.
It appears clear to me that the government is failing its responsibility. The governments could have averted this crises by not zoning their municipalities for 3x, 4x, 5x more jobs than housing units within their borders. Its not like many of these offices have existed forever, they willingly allowed the creating of new offices, with out the requisite housing to support. (See, New Apple Spaceship HQ, Facebook campus, and expansion in Menlo Park, Google's constant expansion, the numerous new office parks that have sprung up in every city on the peninsula in the last 10 years).
Much of this is jobs/housing imbalance is a result from prop 13, which disincentivized housing construction by making the development of commercial property more net tax advantageous (taxes in minus services provided) when compared with housing.